No where on this continent do you see individuals claiming the Chicano banner. We are unique to the United States of America as a people and as a movement. If you have no country and are truly nomadic then burn your birth certificate and follow the herds and hunt and live off the land. That is nomadic my friend. Not even the Sioux or Apache live this way. You are very idealistic and that is fine but to an extent naïve as well. I have been member of an American Indian organization while in Fort Hood Texas that was a coalition of tribes and they are not as naive as this. They know they must adapt and are doing so daily.

“Weapons are unusable” is a relative term in this case. Unusable how? We don’t know that extent so thinking that there is just no way to use them as a weapon is not to be assumed at this time. Now the report from the individuals that found them did say they were still lethal. Thus lethal is lethal, you know deadly. The broken gun thing is not the same. Chemical can not be compared to a firearm. Those are nothing alike. If I have a canister of nerve agent and only the most inner portion is lethal than it is still lethal none the less. If I can not shoot it from an Arty peace then I can make into an IED or I can strap it to a car or I can take the contents and poor it in a water source. I can also put it in a small airplane and fly it into a stadium or compound full of people. A broken gun is just broken. Not the same thing at all.

This is where it is right now. Sounds like this so called defense offical is nervous about this being a good thing for the President.

Nomadic people don't need a flag bc they do not a country to claim (why do you think many have American and Mexican flags together?). Here's a definition of nomad:

no·mad: n. 1. A member of a group of people who have no fixed home and move according to the seasons from place to place in search of food, water, and grazing land.
2. A person with no fixed residence who roams about; a wanderer.

Does this sound like many of our people or just mine? Our people are adaptable to anything, but that doesn't mean anything except they can adapt.

Funny thing about my birth certificate, I have lost it a long time ago, but yet can still cross the border as much as I please. Shows you how much national security on the border patrols are actually doing their job.

Isn't obsolete the same as "unusable"? If they're "unusable" then they're not WMD bc most countries have them? How long do they usually last until they're "unsable"? That's why I'm asking you. If you take offense on that, then I'm sorry for asking questions on stuff I assume you would know bc you're in the military.

You are gullible, my friend. I see things the way they are.

__________________
"Don't Demonstrate, Infiltrate! From within you can help those without." -Jorge Le Rand
"Tehan tohtocazqueh to tamatcayotl can cachi chicahuac." - David Vazquez

No. I have an obsolete rifle that was issued by the government in the 1960's but it is still functional. It will still kill.

BTW I used the word Banner as a metaphor not literal. You contradict yourself by stating we don't need flags then refer to the American and Mexican flag, which I have both in my bar area of the house. Also just because border security sucks that doesn't make you a nomad. The fact that Raza comes here all the time to work does not make them nomads either. If they had a choice believe me they would stay put in Mexico with their families. Not trying to be any way but you are making your reallity what you want it to be. That is your thing and that is cool i guess.

Most media outlets represented WMD as a monolithic menace, failing to adequately distinguish between weapons programs and actual weapons or to address the real differences among chemical, biological, nuclear, and radiological weapons.

Most journalists accepted the Bush administration’s formulation of the “War on Terror” as a campaign against WMD, in contrast to coverage during the Clinton era, when many journalists made careful distinctions between acts of terrorism and the acquisition and use of WMD.

Too few stories proffered alternative perspectives to official line, a problem exacerbated by the journalistic prioritizing of breaking-news stories and the “inverted pyramid” style of storytelling.

Retired military weapons, munitions, and training expert, SFC Red Thomas, attributes poor public understanding of weapons of mass destruction to the media and entertainment:
"Forget everything you've ever seen on TV, in the movies, or read in a novel about this stuff, it was all a lie." ([20]) Thomas explains the differences between different types of weapons considered to be WMD because of perceived ignorance among the media.
In a separate study published in 2005 ([21]), a group of researchers assessed the effects reports and retractions in the media had on people’s memory regarding the search for WMD in Iraq during the 2003 Iraq War. The study focused on populations in two coalition countries (Australia and USA) and one opposed to the war (Germany). Results showed that US citizens generally did not correct initial misconceptions regarding WMD, even following disconfirmation; Australian and German citizens were more responsive to retractions. Dependence on the initial source of information led to a substantial minority of Americans exhibiting false memory that WMD were indeed discovered, while they were not. This led to three conclusions:

The repetition of tentative news stories, even if they are subsequently disconfirmed, can assist in the creation of false memories in a substantial proportion of people.

Once information is published, its subsequent correction does not alter people's beliefs unless they are suspicious about the motives underlying the events the news stories are about.

When people ignore corrections, they do so irrespective of how certain they are that the corrections occurred.

Even though WMD were found in Iraq at least one time (disclosed to the public June 21, 2006) in which more than 300 enriched forms of Mustard and Sarin gas were discovered to be in the hands of Saddam Hussein, a poll conducted between June and September of 2003 asked whether they thought WMD had been discovered in Iraq since the war ended. They were also asked which media sources they relied upon. Those who incorrectly believed WMD had been discovered were three times more likely to obtain their news primarily from Fox News than from PBS and NPR, and ten percent more likely to have obtained their news primarily from Fox News than CBS, Fox's runner-up.Media sourceRespondents believing WMD had been found in Iraq since the war endedFox 33% CBS 23% NBC 20% CNN 20% ABC 19% Print media 17% PBS-NPR 11% Based on a series of polls taken from June-September 2003. Misperceptions, the Media and the Iraq War, PIPA, October 2, 2003.
Some people believe that Iraq moved their WMDs to neighbouring countries, notably Syria, before the war began. There are multiple reasons for suspicion, but no evidence of Iraq doing this.
However, recent State Department documents declassified in 2006 cite hundreds of weapons of mass destruction found in Iraq, but according to the Defense Department these were unusable, degraded, pre-1991 weapons. [2]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Ceyaotl

You contradict yourself by stating we don't need flags then refer to the American and Mexican flag, which I have both in my bar area of the house. Also just because border security sucks that doesn't make you a nomad. The fact that Raza comes here all the time to work does not make them nomads either. If they had a choice believe me they would stay put in Mexico with their families. Not trying to be any way but you are making your reallity what you want it to be. That is your thing and that is cool i guess.

People having two flags to try to define themselves so no, I'm not counterdicting myself.

Going from one side to another does not make me a nomad. Moving from one place to another without somewhere to call home makes me a nomad.

__________________
"Don't Demonstrate, Infiltrate! From within you can help those without." -Jorge Le Rand
"Tehan tohtocazqueh to tamatcayotl can cachi chicahuac." - David Vazquez

WASHINGTON, June 22 — The United States government abandoned the search for unconventional weapons in Iraq long ago. But Dave Gaubatz has never given up.

Mr. Gaubatz, an earnest, Arabic-speaking investigator who spent the first months of the war as an Air Force civilian in southern Iraq, has said he has identified four sites where residents said chemical weapons were buried in concrete bunkers.

The sites were never searched, he said, and he is not going to let anyone forget it.

"I just don't want the weapons to fall into the wrong hands," Mr. Gaubatz, of Denton, Tex., said.

For the last year, he has given his account on talk radio programs, in Congressional offices and on his Web site, which he introduced last month with, "A lone American battles politicians to locate W.M.D."

Some politicians are outspoken allies in Mr. Gaubatz's cause. He is just one of a vocal and disparate collection of Americans, mostly on the political right, whose search for Saddam Hussein's unconventional weapons continues.

More than a year after the White House, at considerable political cost, accepted the intelligence agencies' verdict that Mr. Hussein destroyed his stockpiles in the 1990's, these Americans have an unshakable faith that the weapons continue to exist.

The proponents include some members of Congress. Two Republicans, Representative Peter Hoekstra of Michigan, chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, and Senator Rick Santorum of Pennsylvania held a news conference on Wednesday to announce that, as Mr. Santorum put it, "We have found weapons of mass destruction in Iraq."

American intelligence officials hastily scheduled a background briefing for the news media on Thursday to clarify that. Hoekstra and Mr. Santorum were referring to an Army report that described roughly 500 munitions containing "degraded" mustard or sarin gas, all manufactured before the 1991 gulf war and found scattered through Iraq since 2003.

Such shells had previously been reported and do not change the government conclusion, the officials said.

Such official statements are unlikely to settle the question for the believers, some of whom have impressive credentials. They include a retired Air Force lieutenant general, Thomas G. McInerney, a commentator on the Fox News Channel who has broadcast that weapons are in three places in Syria and one in Lebanon, moved there with Russian help on the eve of the war.

Also among the weapons hunters is Duane R. Clarridge, a long-retired officer of the Central Intelligence Agency who said he thought that the weapons had been moved to Sudan by ship.

"And we think we know which ship," Mr. Clarridge said in a recent interview.

The weapons hunters hold fast to the administration's original justification for the war, as expressed by the president three days before the bombing began in 2003. There was "no doubt," Mr. Bush said in an address to the nation, "that the Iraq regime continues to possess and conceal some of the most lethal weapons ever devised."

The weapons hunters were encouraged in February when tapes of Mr. Hussein's talking with top aides about his arsenal were released at the Intelligence Summit, a private gathering in northern Virginia of 600 former spies, former military officers and hobbyists.

"We reopened the W.M.D. question in a big way," said John Loftus, organizer of the conference.

In March, under Congressional pressure, National Intelligence Director John D. Negroponte began posting on the Web thousands of captured Iraqi documents. Some intelligence officials opposed the move, fearing a free-for-all of amateur speculation and intrigue.

But the weapons hunters were heartened and began combing the documents for clues.

Mr. Gaubatz, 47, now chief investigator for the Dallas County medical examiner, said he knew some people might call him a kook.

"I don't care about being embarrassed," he said, spreading snapshots, maps and notebooks documenting his findings across the dining room table in an interview at his house. "I only brought this up when the White House said the hunt for W.M.D. was over."

Last week, Mr. Gaubatz achieved a victory. He presented his case to officers from the Defense Intelligence Agency in Dallas. The meeting was scheduled after the intervention of Mr. Hoekstra and Representative Curt Weldon of Pennsylvania, second-ranking Republican on the House Armed Services Committee.

Mr. Weldon spoke with Mr. Gaubatz last month in a lengthy conference call.

Mr. Hoekstra "has said on many occasions that we need to know what happened to Saddam's W.M.D.," his spokesman, Jamal Ware, said. Mr. Hoekstra "is determined to make sure that we get the postwar intelligence right," Mr. Ware added.

---------------------------------------------------------------------

Very interesting, now as far as this part of what you posted.

"in contrast to coverage during the Clinton era, when many journalists made careful distinctions between acts of terrorism and the acquisition and use of WMD."

I think this happened due to the fact that this is pre 9/11 and Clinton as a President even though he talked a good game after the first NYC bombing and let things get worse after the two embassies were bombed, the Military barracks and then the U.S.S. Cole bombings the media new he was treating these things as criminal act not acts of terror. They literally gave him a pass. If President Bush got shit for sitting in that classroom for seven minutes Clinton took thee cake by standing by and doing nothing for years.

"Nomadic people don't need a flag bc they do not a country to claim (why do you think many have American and Mexican flags together?)."

This is a contradiction. Not needing a flag and having two for a reason is a contradiction my friend. I know your point though. Still not having to answer to someone and going back and forth from Mexico the Califas is not a nomad. I am not trying to argue so we will just agree to disagree on that one if you like?

Powell scared the world with rumors of aging chemical and biological weapons that would have long ago turned to harmless goo.

For weeks, we have been hearing breathless media reports of possible discoveries of chemical and biological weapons by U.S. and British troops in Iraq. Within hours or days, if one scours the back pages of the newspaper, he finds that it was merely another false alarm. But what is never mentioned is that these weapons, made five, ten or fifteen years ago, are almost certainly unusable, having long since passed their stable shelf-life, according to the Department of Defense's own documents based on a decade of international inspections, electronic surveillance and information supplied by spies and defectors.

There was never any question Iraq once had weapons of mass destruction programs. Nor was the world naïve enough to trust Saddam Hussein not to try and hide such weapons from UN inspectors. The rationale for the U.S. invasion, however, was that after a decade of sanctions, war, U.S. bombing runs, and UN inspections, Iraq still possessed a viable nuclear, chemical or biological threat that could be deployed beyond Iraq’s borders or which was in danger of being supplied to terrorist groups.

Unfortunately, there is absolutely no basis for this argument, made so forcefully by Secretary of State Colin Powell at the United Nations, when he claimed to possess clear evidence that huge stocks of everything from sarin gas to anthrax to sanction-violating missiles were stored in Iraq, ready for use. Never mind that the same Iraqi defector who told Powell about the stores of chem and bio weapons also said they had been completely destroyed, which Powell neglected to tell the United Nations. It doesn’t matter, because those stores would almost certainly have become useless by now.

Strangely, the U.S. media have, with almost no exceptions, failed to mention that most bio/chemical agents have a rather limited shelf life. The few who do usually quote Scott Ritter, former UN Iraqi weapons inspector and controversial opponent of Dubya’s drive to Baghdad.

According to Ritter, the chemical weapons which Iraq has been known to possess -- nerve agents like sarin and tabun -- have a shelf life of five years, VX just a bit longer. Saddam's major bio weapons are hardly any better; botulinum toxin is potent for about three years, and liquid anthrax about the same (under the right conditions). And he adds that since all chemical weapons were made in Iraq's only chemical weapons complex – the Muthanna State establishment, which was blown up during the first Gulf War in 1991 -- and all biological weapons plants and research papers were clearly destroyed by 1998, any remaining bio/chemical weapons stores are now “harmless, useless goo."

However, others have questioned Ritter’s veracity. A former hawk keen on an Iraq invasion after the first Gulf War, as recently as 1998 he wrote in an article for the New Republic that Saddam may have successfully hidden everything from potent biological and chemical agents to his "entire nuclear weapons infrastructure" from UN inspectors.

But the truth of the matter is that Iraq’s WMD may have even less of a shelf life than Ritter now claims -- and the U.S. government knows it.

The U.S. Defense Department’s “Militarily Critical Technologies List” (MCTL) is “a detailed compendium of technologies" that the department advocates as “critical to maintaining superior US military capabilities. It applies to all mission areas, especially counter-proliferation.” Written in 1998, it was recently re-published with updates for 2002.

So what is the MCTL’s opinion of Iraq's chemical weapons program? In making its chemical nerve agents, “The Iraqis . . . produce[d] a . . . mixture which was inherently unstable,” says the report. “When the Iraqis produced chemical munitions they appeared to adhere to a ‘make and use’ regimen. Judging by the information Iraq gave the United Nations, later verified by on-site inspections, Iraq had poor product quality for their nerve agents. This low quality was likely due to a lack of purification. They had to get the agent to the front promptly or have it degrade in the munition.”

Furthermore, says this Defense Department report, “The chemical munitions found in Iraq after the [first] Gulf War contained badly deteriorated agents and a significant proportion were visibly leaking.” The shelf life of these poorly made agents were said to be a few weeks at best -- hardly the stuff of vast chemical weapons stores.

There was some talk shortly before the first Gulf War that the Iraqis had been creating binary chemical weapons, in which the relatively non-toxic ingredients of the agent remain unmixed until just before the weapon is used; this allows the user to bypass any worry about shelf life or toxicity. But according to the MCTL, “The Iraqis had a small number of bastardized binary munitions in which some unfortunate individual was to pour one ingredient into the other from a Jerry can prior to use” -- an action few soldiers were willing to perform.

Iraq did produce mustard gas that was somewhat more stable than the nerve agents. It may have a longer shelf life; perhaps potent forms of this agent could still be found. But one must wonder how worried we should be about Iraq’s poorly-made agents, several years after their production.

And, as Ritter now insists, any chemical weapons facilities operating in recent years could, like their nuclear counterpart, have given off vented gases; and any new biological weapons programs would have to start again from scratch. Both activities would have been easily detected by Western intelligence, and no such evidence has been produced.

The argument for Iraq as a nuclear threat was built on even shakier ground, but this didn’t keep hawks from exploiting non-evidence to frighten any reticent politicians. As Congress was preparing to vote on the resolution authorizing the use of force in Iraq, Tony Blair's government picked that moment to publicly release an apparent bombshell: British intelligence had obtained documents showing that between 1999 and 2001, Iraq had attempted to buy “significant quantities of uranium” from an unnamed African country “despite having no active civil nuclear power programme that could require it.”

The New Yorker's Seymour Hersh writes that the very same day Blair unveiled this alleged “smoking gun,” CIA Director George Tenet discussed the documents between Iraq and Niger, the African country in question, during a closed-session Senate Foreign Relations Committee hearing on the Iraq WMD issue. Blair had handed the papers over to American intelligence, and at just the right time; Tenet's evidence was instrumental in getting Congress to back the war resolution.

The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) was to verify the authenticity of these important documents for the UN Security Council, but only obtained them from the U.S. government after months of pleading -- a strange delay, considering the Bush White House was so eager to prove Saddam’s nuclear intentions to a skeptical world.

As we now know, Mohamed ElBaradei, director-general of the IAEA, told the UN Security Council that the documents regarding the uranium sales were clear fakes. One senior IAEA official told Hersh, “These documents are so bad that I cannot imagine they came from a serious intelligence agency.”

When asked about the forgeries at a later House hearing, Secretary of State Colin Powell said only, “It came from other sources. It was provided in good faith to the inspectors.” Several fingers pointed to Britain’s MI6 as the perpetrators; Arabs pointed to Israel’s Mossad.

Indeed, this administration often obscured the fact that the UN destroyed all of Iraq's nuclear weapons program infrastructure and facilities by the time inspectors left in 1998. Even if Hussein had somehow secretly imported the materials necessary to rebuild them within the past five years, even as UN sanctions, no-fly zones and vigorous spying by Western forces remained firmly in place, Iraq could not hide the gases, heat, and gamma radiation which centrifuge facilities emit and which our intelligence capacities would have identified by now.

A week after the IAEA’s bombshell, Sen. Jay Rockefeller (D-WV), formally asked for an FBI investigation into the matter, stating that, “the fabrication of these documents may be part of a larger deception aimed at manipulating public opinion . . . regarding Iraq.”

At this point, with even White House insiders and media boosters admitting they no longer expect to find much, if any, in the way of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, different unconvincing storylines are being floated: The weapons all went to Syria, they were efficiently destroyed just hours before the U.S. invasion, etc. The truth, however, appears to be that Iraq was a paper tiger, with little or no ability to threaten the United States or Israel.

This dude is nothing more than a Liberal left writer that post stories on AlterNet.com. He is a left wing writer with an ax to grind and you wonder why nobody replies to your post. HA!

these WMD's are lethal. Lethal, Tec. Over time they do get weaker but man lethal is still lethal. The funny thing is if they were out in the sunlight and air they would get old and become useless much faster. When you cover them they can last for many years. Just a little in a bomb would not be a good thing. All the down play of these things are not doing a public service at all.

Nerve agents (also known as nerve gases, though these chemicals are liquid at room temperature) are a class of phosphorus-containing organic chemicals (organophosphates) that disrupt the mechanism by which nerves transfer messages to organs. The disruption is caused by blocking acetylcholinesterase, an enzyme that normally relaxes the activity of acetylcholine, a neurotransmitter. As chemical weapons, they are classified as weapons of mass destruction by the United Nations according to UN Resolution 687, and their production and stockpiling was outlawed by the Chemical Weapons Convention of 1993; the Chemical Weapons Convention officially took effect on April 29, 1997.

Poisoning by a nerve agent leads to contraction of pupils, profuse salivation, convulsions, involuntary urination and defecation, and eventual death by asphyxiation as control is lost over respiratory muscles. Some nerve agents are readily vaporized or aerosolized and the primary portal of entry into the body is the respiratory system. Nerve agents can also be absorbed through the skin, requiring that those likely to be subjected to such agents wear a full body suit in addition to a respirator.

-------------------------------------------

So by this definition Saddam was wrong for having these or any WMD's period.

---------------------------------------------------------------
Efforts to lengthen shelf life
According to the CIA, nations such as Iraq have tried to overcome the problem of sarin's short shelf life in two ways:
• The shelf life of unitary (i.e., pure) sarin may be lengthened by increasing the purity of the precursor and intermediate chemicals and refining the production process.
• Incorporating a stabilizer chemical called tributylamine. Later this was replaced by diisopropylcarbodiimide (di-c-di), which allowed for GB nerve agent to be stored in aluminum casings.
• Developing binary chemical weapons, where the two precursor chemicals are stored separately in the same shell, and mixed to form the agent immediately before or when the shell is in flight. This approach has the dual benefit of making the issue of shelf life irrelevant and greatly increasing the safety of sarin munitions
So therefore if these 500 rounds have a configuration such as this then they are only unusable if they are split and kept separate and away from one another. Or may still pack a punch in this aluminum casing. Isn’t it better we now know that we have them now?
--------------------------------------------------

Now if these were seperate in the canisters then they could still be both unsuable and leathal because they were not mixed and could still be lethal when mixed. Very tough situation.

You mean Tenant? What a joke that dude is. He was trying to save his own ass as he knew he was the one that gave the President the "slam dunk" statement. He is a Clintonista anyway. He should have never been in the position he was in anyway. Forgery is when CBS came out with the National Guard report. Just ask Dan Rather, you might run into him out there beaten the pavement. I say WMD's are WMD's and we found them and we have them now. Better for the entire world that this is the case. Saddam is gone and we are winning in Afganistan. Whether you like it or not we are in a World War and it is now. Reality is not scare tactics it is reality. Terrorist in our time is real life is real, live it.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Solitude

Just cause a bunch of ppl are in denial and "believe the wmd's to exist" does not mean they do. They guy had no nukes and his pre-gulf war chemicals were expired and deteriorating. He had no way to launch them into any striking distance of our country and was not the threat that Bush lied and said he was. All these WMD's Bush fabricated proved to be hype and lies. A bunch of expired and deteriorating chemicals that we already knew about during the last republican president was not an excuse to invade nor was it the reason we were lied to to get us to invade.

You guys pathetically try to make reasons to justify a war we went to over lies and more lies ..... how sad.

Just because the author stated that facts and the facts made your case look weak does not mean he is not credible. His article was well researched and factual, not based on some nutcase's unproven "opinion" as with your article.

Saddam was a jerk but he was no dummy. If he didn't have WMD's all he had to do was let the inspectors in. He did not. The UN said do it and he didn't. As a member Nation of the UN we were not happy with the UN's lack of ganas and so we gathered a coalition and took him out. The world is now safer even more so with the findings of these 500 WMD's. YOu problem is you want to "GET BUSH" You can not stand the fact that the President was right for taking action. The article I posted I think was a good one based on an individual that was there on the ground and knows his shit. Former CIA inspector qualified etc. This guy, your guy is a reporter with limited information. I would trust my source any day before I trust yours.

Tyler Drumheller was the source I posted. He was a former CIA director.

You forget these were 500 WMD's that were expired and dismantled from the pre-gulf war that we knew about when Bush pulled out in the gulf war. It was not the WMD's that we were afraid of and told about by the current Bush that was said to exist and did not exist when we went in to find them !

I'm against Bush cause he is a liar.

and as for your UN comment - they were against the war for a reason. They knew he didn't have them and Bush was full of shit.

Tenant was a director and he got it wrong. My source was on the ground and has yet to been proven wrong. 500 WMD's were not dismantled. The really real condition of these WMD's are still not fully published in a formal report, remember that. The WMD's we weren't afraid of? You mean there are WMD's that you are not afraid of? HA! Let me get you one of those canisters we found and let you hold on to it for just one minute. Do you think you would say "Oh these are not the ones we were talaking about it's okay" If you are smart you will haul ass as far as you can. I will be in a cem suit with my Pro-mask and gloves. Not afraid of, HA! LMMFAO!!!

"They knew he didn't have them and Bush was full of shit."

Once again your pupose is clearly "HATE BUSH" BS. If they knew he didn't have them why were they buggen out about WMD's moving up to the war? Your argument hold no water.

i can never understand how middle or poor class ppl can be republicans, don't they don't know those right wings only care about MAKING MONEY for themselves?you've pic of che crossed out but why? che died for indigenous liberation. if jesus came back today, bush would have him killed too.

. The fact that millions of Latino and middle class normal people are Republicans must tell you that there is a reason. The fact is Liberal thinking which has taken over the Democratic Party is not main stream thinking. It is radical Godless and anti-American/the hate America crowd. The fact is if you look at this posting by the Communist party you will see where the communist Party ideology and rhetoric has taken over the Chicano movement. Read this and tell me the rhetoric doesn't sound familiar.

---"Well, did your history prof tell you that one of the bloodiest and longest guerrilla wars on this continent was fought – not by – but against Fidel and Che, and by landless peasants?"---

Read more below!!

Che Guevara: Assassin and Bumbler – by Humberto Fontova

Humberto Fontova
Monday, Feb. 23, 2004

"SENTENCE first – VERDICT afterwards," said the Queen.

"Nonsense!" said Alice loudly.

"Off with her head!" the Queen shouted at the top of her voice.

– Alice In Wonderland

They say Lewis Carroll was a serious dope fiend, his mind totally scrambled on opium, when he concocted "Alice in Wonderland." A place where the sentence comes first and the verdict afterward, where people who protest the madness are sentenced to death themselves – what lunacy!

If only Carroll had lived a bit longer. If only he'd visited Cuba in 1959 when every paper from the New York Times to the London Observer – when every pundit from Walter Lippman to Ed Murrow, every author from Jean Paul Sartre to Norman Mailer, every TV host from Jack Paar to Ed Sullivan were touting the judicial outrages, mass larceny and firing-squad orgies instituted by Fidel Castro and Che Guevara as the most glorious events since VJ day.

"To send men to the firing squad, judicial proof is unnecessary," Carroll would have heard from the chief executioner, named Ernesto "Che" Guevara. "These procedures are an archaic bourgeois detail. This is a revolution! And a revolutionary must become a cold killing machine motivated by pure hate. We must create the pedagogy of the paredon (The Wall)!"

To be fair, Ed Sullivan later recanted. He saw through the murderous farce and was not above a public act of contrition. Indeed, two years later he featured several recently liberated Bay of Pigs freedom fighters – some hobbling on crutches, others missing limbs – on his show for a fund raising where he declared them heroes and led the thunderous applause himself. I sure miss Ed Sullivan.

This from last week's AP:

"At The Sundance Film Festival Robert Redford's film on Che Guevara "The Motorcycle Diaries" received a standing ovation." They say this was the only film so raptly received.

For the first year of Castro's glorious revolution Che Guevara was his main executioner – a combination Beria and Himmler, with a major exception: Che's slaughter of (bound and gagged) Cubans (Che was himself an Argentine) exceeded Heinrich Himmler's prewar slaughter of Germans – to scale, that is.

Nazi Germany became the modern standard for political evil even before World War II. Yet in 1938, according to both William Shirer and John Toland, the Nazi regime held no more than 20,000 political prisoners. Political executions up to the time might have reached a couple thousand, and most of these were of renegade Nazis themselves during the indiscriminate butchery known as the "Night of the Long Knives." The famous Kristallnacht that horrified civilized opinion worldwide caused a grand total of 71 deaths. This in a nation of 70 million.

Cuba was a nation of 6.5 million in 1959. Within three months in power, Castro and Che had shamed the Nazi prewar incarceration and murder rate. One defector claims that Che signed 500 death warrants, another says over 600. Cuban journalist Luis Ortega, who knew Che as early as 1954, writes in his book "Yo Soy El Che!" that Guevara sent 1,897 men to the firing squad. In his book "Che Guevara: A Biography," Daniel James writes that Che himself admitted to ordering "several thousand" executions during the first few years of the Castro regime.

So the scope of the mass murder is unclear. So the exact number of widows and orphans is in dispute. So the number of gagged and blindfolded men who Che sent – without trials – to be bound to a stake and blown apart by bullets runs from the hundreds to the thousands.

But the mass executioner gets a standing ovation by the same people in the U.S who oppose capitol punishment! Is there a psychiatrist in the house?!

The first three months of the Cuban Revolution saw 568 firing squad executions. Even the New York Times admits it. The preceding "trials" shocked and nauseated all who witnessed them. They were shameless farces, sickening charades. Ask Barry Farber. He was there.

But vengeance – much less justice – had nothing to do with this bloodbath. Che's murderous method in La Cabana fortress in 1959 was exactly Stalin's murderous method in the Katyn Forest in 1940. Like Stalin's massacre of the Polish officer corps in the Katyn forest, like Stalin's Great Terror against his own officer corps a few years earlier, Che's firing squad marathons were a perfectly rational and cold-blooded exercise that served their purpose ideally. His bloodbath decapitated – literally and figuratively the first ranks of Cuba's Contras.

Five years earlier, while a communist hobo in Guatemala, Che had seen the Guatemalan officer corps rise against the Red regime of Jacobo Arbenz and send him hightailing to Czechoslovakia.

Che didn't want a repeat in Cuba. Equally important, his massacre cowed and terrorized. These were all public trials. And the executions, right down to the final shattering of the skull with the coup de grace from a massive .45 slug fired at five paces, were public too. Guevara made it a policy for his men to parade the families and friends of the executed before the blood-, bone- and brain-spattered paredon (The Wall, and Pink Floyd had nothing to do with this one).

The Red Terror had come to Cuba. "We will make our hearts cruel, hard, and immovable ... we will not quiver at the sight of a sea of enemy blood. Without mercy, without sparing, we will kill our enemies in scores of thousands; let them drown themselves in their own blood! Let there be floods of the blood of the bourgeois – more blood, as much as possible."

This from Felix Dzerzhinsky, the head of the Soviet Cheka in 1918:

"Crazy with fury I will stain my rifle red while slaughtering any enemy that falls in my hands! My nostrils dilate while savoring the acrid odor of gunpowder and blood. With the deaths of my enemies I prepare my being for the sacred fight and join the triumphant proletariat with a bestial howl!"

This from Che Guevara's "Motorcycle Diaries," the very diaries just made into a heartwarming film by Robert Redford – again, the only film to get that whoopin' hollerin' standing ovation at last month's Sundance Film Festival. Seems that Redford omitted this inconvenient portion of Che's diaries form his touching film.

The "acrid odor of gunpowder and blood" never reached Guevara's nostril from actual combat. It always came from the close-range murder of bound, gagged and blindfolded men. He was a true Chekist: "Always interrogate your prisoners at night," Che commanded his prosecutorial goons. "A man is easier to cow at night, his mental resistance is always lower."

Che specialized in psychological torture. Many prisoners were yanked out of their cells, bound, blindfolded and stood against The Wall. The seconds ticked off. The condemned could hear the rifle bolts snapping ..... finally – FUEGO!!

BLAM!! But the shots were blanks. In his book, "Tocayo," Cuban freedom fighter Tony Navarro describes how he watched a man returned to his cell after such an ordeal. He'd left bravely, grim-faced as he shook hands with his fellow condemned. He came back mentally shattered, curling up in a corner of the squalid cell for days.

A real cutup, this Che Guevara. And now the same crowd moaning and wailing about the judicial rights of Guantanamo prisoners give this sadist a standing ovation and adorn themselves with his T-shirt! Again, is there a psychiatrist in the house?!

Che made "Alice in Wonderland's" Red Queen look like Oliver Wendell Holmes. His models were Lenin, Dzerzhinsky and Stalin. The Cheka came to Cuba with Guevara.

But in actual combat, his imbecilities defy belief. Compared to Che "The Lionhearted" Guevara, Groucho Marx in "Duck Soup" comes across like Hannibal.

His performance during the Bay of Pigs invasion says it all. The invasion plan included a CIA squad dispatching three rowboats off the coast of western Cuba (350 miles from the true invasion site) loaded with time-release Roman candles, bottle rockets, mirrors and a tape recording of battle.

The wily Che immediately deciphered the imperialist scheme! That little feint 300 miles away at the Bay of Pigs was a transparent ruse! The REAL invasion was coming here in Pinar Del Rio! Che stormed over with several thousand troops, dug in, locked, loaded and waited for the "Yankee/mercenary" attack. They braced themselves as the sparklers, smoke bombs and mirrors did their stuff just offshore.

Three days later the (literal) smoke and mirror show expended itself and Che's men marched back to Havana. Not surprisingly, the masterful Comandante had managed to wound himself in this heated battle against a tape recorder. The bullet pierced Che's chin and excited above his temple, just missing his brain. The scar is visible in all post-April '61 pictures of the gallant Che (the picture we see on posters and T-shirts was shot a year earlier.)

Cuban novelist Guillermo Cabrera Infante, a Fidelista at the time, speculates the wound may have come from a botched suicide attempt.

"No way!" say Che hagiographers John Lee Anderson, Carlos Castaneda and Paco Taibo. They insist it was an accident, Che's own pistol going off just under his face.

Fine, Che groupies. Maybe you're right. Maybe we're being unduly harsh on the man. Maybe the humiliation of being tricked into missing the major battle against imperialist mercenaries by an amplified tape recording and a few Roman candles wasn't enough to prompt suicide.

Instead, the sight of the bottle rocket's red glare and the sound of tape-recorded bombs bursting in air roused Che to a Pattonesque fury. He drew his pistol and prepared to lead the charge against the Yankee juggernaut. "Arriba muchachos!" he bellowed as his men sprung from their trenches with bayonets gleaming and charged a tape recorder. With the amplified soundtrack from "The Sands of Iwo Jima" blaring in the background Che stood atop a the tank turret and turned to his men. "Let's wipe 'em out!" he yelled while waving his pistol overhead in the manner of Clevon Little in "Blazing Saddles."

Then he managed to shoot himself through the chin. Fine.

I've called him cowardly. Yet in all fairness, we don't know. For the simple reason that the century's most celebrated guerrilla fighter never fought in a guerrilla war or anything even approximating one. The few puerile skirmishes again Batista's army in Cuba would have been shrugged off as a slow night by any Cripp or Blood. In Cuba Che couldn't fight anyone to fight against him. In the Congo he couldn't find any to fight with him. In Bolivia he finally started getting a tiny taste of both. In short order he was betrayed, brought to ground and routed.

Sadly, Guevara's legacy of terror and torture persists to this day and throughout the world. I refer to the professors who assign his writings.

I defy anyone to actually finish a Guevara book. I defy them to hack their way through the first five pages. Che's gibberish makes Babs Streisand sound like Cicero. He makes Hillary's ghostwriters read like Dave Barry. Beside him Al Gore and Hillary Rodham shine as the wackiest of cutups.

Food, drink, good cheer, bonhomie, roistering, fellowship – Guevara recoiled from these like Dracula from a cross. He went through life with a perpetual scowl, like Bella Abzug ... almost like Eleanor Clift.

As a professional duty I tortured myself with Che Guevara's writings. I finished glassy-eyed, dazed, almost catatonic. Nothing written by a first-year philosophy major (or a Total Quality Management guru) could be more banal, jargon-ridden, depressing or idiotic. A specimen:

"The past makes itself felt not only in the individual consciousness – in which the residue of an education systematically oriented toward isolating the individual still weighs heavily – but also through the very character of this transition period in which commodity relations still persist, although this is still a subjective aspiration, not yet systematized."

Slap yourself and let's continue:

"To the extent that we achieve concrete successes on a theoretical plane – or, vice versa, to the extent that we draw theoretical conclusions of a broad character on the basis of our concrete research –we will have made a valuable contribution to Marxism-Leninism, and to the cause of humanity."

Splash some cold water on your face and stick with me for just a little more:

"It is still necessary to deepen his conscious participation, individual and collective, in all the mechanisms of management and production, and to link this to the idea of the need for technical and ideological education, so that we see how closely interdependent these processes are and how their advancement is parallel. In this way he will reach total consciousness of his social being, which is equivalent to his full realization as a human creature, once the chains of alienation are broken."

Dude, this dork's image sells beer huggers and vodka! Again, is there a psychiatrist in the house?!

Throughout his diaries Che whines about deserters from his "guerilla" ranks (bored adolescents, petty crooks and winos playing army on the weekend). Can you BLAME them? Imagine sharing a campfire with some yo-yo droning on and on about "subjective aspirations not yet systematized" and "closely interdependent processes and total consciousness of social being" – and who also reeked like a polecat(foremost among the bourgeois debauchments disdained by Che were baths).

These hapless "deserters" were hunted down like animals, trussed up and brought back to a dispassionate Che, who put a pistol to their heads and blew their skulls apart without a second thought.

After days spent listening to Che and smelling him, perhaps this meant relief.

Nurse Ratched, Doug Neidermeyer, Col. Klink, Maj. Frank Burns – next to Guevara they're all the heartiest of partiers. Here's the guy who helped turn the hemisphere's party capital into a vast forced labor and prison camp – into the place with the highest (youth) emigration and suicide rate in the hemisphere, probably in the world. In 1961 Che even established a special concentration camp at Guanacahibes in extreme Western Cuba for "delinquents." This "delinquency" involved drinking, vagrancy, disrespect for authorities, laziness and playing loud music.

And Che's image adorns Grunge bands, jet-set models and spring break revelers! Again, is there a psychiatrist in the house?!

Who can blame Fidel for ducking into the nearest closet when this yo-yo came calling? Call Fidel everything in the book (as I have) but don't call him stupid. Guevara's inane twaddle must have driven him nuts. The one place where I can't fault Fidel, the one place I actually empathize with him, is in his craving to rid himself of this insufferable Argentine jackass.

That the Bolivian mission was clearly suicidal was obvious to anyone with half a brain. Fidel and Raul weren't about to join him down there –you can bet your sweet bippy on that.

But sure enough! Guevara saluted and was on his way post haste. Two months later he was dead. Bingo! Fidel scored another bulls-eye. He rid himself of the Argentine nuisance and his glorious revolution had a young handsome martyr for the adulation of imbeciles worldwide. Nice work.

Che Guevara was monumentally vain and epically stupid. He was shallow, boorish, cruel and cowardly. He was full of himself, a consummate fraud and an intellectual vacuum. He was intoxicated with a few vapid slogans, spoke in clichés and was a glutton for publicity.

But ah! He DID come out nice in a couple of publicity photos, high cheekbones and all! And we wonder why he's a hit in Hollywood.

********************

Humberto Fontova holds an M.A. in history from Tulane University. He came to the United States when he was six years old and grew up in New Orleans.

--------------------------------------------------

Che the ‘Guerrilla Fighter’ "Literally!"

by Humberto Fontova

Did you catch Eric Burdon on the PBS special "The 60's Experience" last week? Eric was "100 pounds of hipness in a ten-pound bag," as Dave Barry used to say. His Che Guevara shirt shamed both Carlos Santana's and Johnny Depp's. This was no measly t-shirt, either. It was a collared shirt, very elegant, with a HUGE image of the gallant Che's face on both front and back.

My entire family came rushing into the den when I exploded – not in rage – but in mirth. "WE GOTTA GET OUTTA THIS PLACE!" Eric was singing.

"EXACTLY, Eric!" I roared "You NAILED IT, amigo!" That was the exact refrain from 6.3 million Cubans (Cuba's population in 1959) when Fidel and Che took over.

The fiendishly clever Cuban-American National Foundation itself might have produced the show, or slipped him the song list to expose Burdon as a jackass. Che provoked the biggest political exodus in the history of the western hemisphere. Yet the thundering irony was lost on Eric, not to mention the PBS producers.

When your professor calls Che a "guerrilla fighter" he's correct, but unwittingly. The term "Indian fighter" was used for cowboys who fought against Indians right?

Well, did your history prof tell you that one of the bloodiest and longest guerrilla wars on this continent was fought – not by – but against Fidel and Che, and by landless peasants?

Didn't think so. Farm collectivization was no more voluntary in Cuba than in the Ukraine. And Cuba's Kulaks had guns, a few at first anyway. Had these rebels gotten a fraction of the aid the Afghan Mujahedeen got, the Viet Cong got – indeed that George Washington's rebels got from the French – had these Cuban rebels gotten any help, my kids would speak Spanish and Miami's jukeboxes today would carry Tanya Tucker rather than Gloria Estefan.

Che had a very bloody (and typically cowardly) hand in one of the major anti-insurgency wars on this continent. 80 per cent of these anti-communist guerrillas were executed on the spot upon capture, a Che specialty. "We fought with the fury of cornered beasts," said one to describe their desperate freedom fight against the Soviet occupation of Cuba through their proxies Fidel and Che.

In 1956 when Che linked up with Fidel, Raul, and their Cuban chums in Mexico city, one of them (now in exile) recalls Che railing against the Hungarian freedom-fighters as "Fascists!" and cheering their extermination by Soviet tanks.

In 1962 Che got a chance to do more than cheer from the sidelines. He had a hand in the following: "Cuban militia units commanded by Russian officers employed flame-throwers to burn the palm-thatched cottages in the Escambray countryside. The peasant occupants were accused of feeding the counterrevolutionaries and bandits." At one point in 1962, one of every 17 Cubans was a political prisoner. Fidel himself admits that they faced 179 bands of "counter-revolutionaries" and "bandits."

Mass murder was the order in Cuba's countryside. It was the only way to decimate so many rebels. These Cuban country folk went after the Reds with a ferocity that saw Fidel and Che running to their Soviet sugar daddies and tugging their pants in panic. That commie bit about how "a guerrilla swims in the sea which is the people, etc." fit Cuba's anti-Fidel and Che rebellion to a T. So in a relocation and concentration campaign that shamed anything the Brits did to the Boers, the gallant Communists ripped hundreds of thousands of Cubans from their ancestral homes and herded them into concentration camps on the opposite side of Cuba.

One of these Cuban redneck wives refused to be relocated. After her husband, sons, and a few nephews were murdered by the Gallant Che and his minions, she grabbed a tommy gun herself, rammed in a clip and took to the hills. She became a rebel herself. Cubans know her as La Niña Del Escambray.

For a year she ran rings around the Communist armies sweeping the hills in her pursuit. Finally she ran out of ammo and supplies and the reds rounded her up. Amazingly, she wasn't executed (Che must have taken that day off.) For years La Niña suffered horribly in Castro’s dungeons, but she lives in Miami today. Seems to me her tragic story makes ideal fodder for Oprah, for all those women’s magazines, for all those butch professorettes of "Women’s Studies," for a Susan Sarandon role, for a little whooping up by Gloria Steinem, Dianne Feinstein and Hillary herself.

Think about it: here's that favored theme for Hollywood producers and New York publishers – "the feisty woman." Well, they don't come much feistier than Zoila Aguila, her real name. Had she been fighting, say, Somoza or Pinochet, you can bet your sweet bippy Hollywood and New York would be ALL OVER her story. Instead she fought the Left's most picturesque poster boys. So, naturally, nobody's heard of her.

It is amazing to me that Chicanos are so fast to give their life to the image of this fake hero Che that was made great by hollywood and the white hippie Liberals and are yet suppose to be so aware of issues. We as Chicanos need to be more aware of what people are about before we throw our spiritual arms around them and take them as an example.

Quote:

Originally Posted by feliciano

they didn't find any weapons, it turn out to be a lie.

"THE LOUD SOUND OF A BUZZER"! BAAAANNNNNNNNN! Wrong answer! It is reported and documented. The offical report has not came out by the DoD yet.

WASHINGTON — The United States has found 500 chemical weapons in Iraq since 2003, and more weapons of mass destruction are likely to be uncovered, two Republican lawmakers said Wednesday.

"We have found weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, chemical weapons," Sen. Rick Santorum, R-Pa., said in a quickly called press conference late Wednesday afternoon.

Reading from a declassified portion of a report by the National Ground Intelligence Center, a Defense Department intelligence unit, Santorum said: "Since 2003, coalition forces have recovered approximately 500 weapons munitions which contain degraded mustard or sarin nerve agent. Despite many efforts to locate and destroy Iraq's pre-Gulf War chemical munitions, filled and unfilled pre-Gulf War chemical munitions are assessed to still exist."

He added that the report warns about the hazards that the chemical weapons could still pose to coalition troops in Iraq.

"The purity of the agents inside the munitions depends on many factors, including the manufacturing process, potential additives and environmental storage conditions. While agents degrade over time, chemical warfare agents remain hazardous and potentially lethal," Santorum read from the document.

"This says weapons have been discovered, more weapons exist and they state that Iraq was not a WMD-free zone, that there are continuing threats from the materials that are or may still be in Iraq," said Rep. Pete Hoekstra, R-Mich., chairman of the House Intelligence Committee.

The weapons are thought to be manufactured before 1991 so they would not be proof of an ongoing WMD program in the 1990s. But they do show that Saddam Hussein was lying when he said all weapons had been destroyed, and it shows that years of on-again, off-again weapons inspections did not uncover these munitions.

Hoekstra said the report, completed in April but only declassified now, shows that "there is still a lot about Iraq that we don't fully understand."

Asked why the Bush administration, if it had known about the information since April or earlier, didn't advertise it, Hoekstra conjectured that the president has been forward-looking and concentrating on the development of a secure government in Iraq.

Offering the official administration response to FOX News, a senior Defense Department official pointed out that the chemical weapons were not in useable conditions.

"This does not reflect a capacity that was built up after 1991," the official said, adding the munitions "are not the WMDs this country and the rest of the world believed Iraq had, and not the WMDs for which this country went to war."

The official said the findings did raise questions about the years of weapons inspections that had not resulted in locating the fairly sizeable stash of chemical weapons. And he noted that it may say something about Hussein's intent and desire. The report does suggest that some of the weapons were likely put on the black market and may have been used outside Iraq.

He also said that the Defense Department statement shortly after the March 2003 invasion saying that "we had all known weapons facilities secured," has proven itself to be untrue.

"It turned out the whole country was an ammo dump," he said, adding that on more than one occasion, a conventional weapons site has been uncovered and chemical weapons have been discovered mixed within them.

Hoekstra and Santorum lamented that Americans were given the impression after a 16-month search conducted by the Iraq Survey Group that the evidence of continuing research and development of weapons of mass destruction was insignificant. But the National Ground Intelligence Center took up where the ISG left off when it completed its report in November 2004, and in the process of collecting intelligence for the purpose of force protection for soldiers and sailors still on the ground in Iraq, has shown that the weapons inspections were incomplete, they and others have said.

"We know it was there, in place, it just wasn't operative when inspectors got there after the war, but we know what the inspectors found from talking with the scientists in Iraq that it could have been cranked up immediately, and that's what Saddam had planned to do if the sanctions against Iraq had halted and they were certainly headed in that direction," said Fred Barnes, editor of The Weekly Standard and a FOX News contributor.

"It is significant. Perhaps, the administration just, they think they weathered the debate over WMD being found there immediately and don't want to return to it again because things are otherwise going better for them, and then, I think, there's mindless resistance to releasing any classified documents from Iraq," Barnes said.

The release of the declassified materials comes as the Senate debates Democratic proposals to create a timetable for U.S. troops to withdraw from Iraq. The debate has had the effect of creating disunity among Democrats, a majority of whom shrunk Wednesday from an amendment proposed by Sen. John Kerry of Massachusetts to have troops to be completely withdrawn from Iraq by the middle of next year.

At the same time, congressional Republicans have stayed highly united, rallying around a White House that has seen successes in the last couple weeks, first with the death of terror leader Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, then the completion of the formation of Iraq's Cabinet and then the announcement Tuesday that another key Al Qaeda in Iraq leader, "religious emir" Mansour Suleiman Mansour Khalifi al-Mashhadani, or Sheik Mansour, was also killed in a U.S. airstrike.

Santorum pointed out that during Wednesday's debate, several Senate Democrats said that no weapons of mass destruction had been found in Iraq, a claim, he said, that the declassified document proves is untrue.

"This is an incredibly — in my mind — significant finding. The idea that, as my colleagues have repeatedly said in this debate on the other side of the aisle, that there are no weapons of mass destruction, is in fact false," he said.

As a result of this new information, under the aegis of his chairmanship, Hoekstra said he is going to ask for more reporting by the various intelligence agencies about weapons of mass destruction.

"We are working on the declassification of the report. We are going to do a thorough search of what additional reports exist in the intelligence community. And we are going to put additional pressure on the Department of Defense and the folks in Iraq to more fully pursue a complete investigation of what existed in Iraq before the war," Hoekstra said.

I know, I know George Bush put them there, right? HA! As usual the Liberals in this country are on the wrong side of history and will not admit they were wrong. So lets see, no blood for oil and there were WMD's. Just think if we had left Iraq and let the Terrorist get these WMD's. Just think if we had not held Saddam to the 14 UN resolutions that the scared little European countries had no balls to enforce. Thank God we have a President that sees the future in a bigger broader spectrum of possibilities and has a better notion as to how the American people should be protected.

Anyone can read into this report and say "See it wasn't the ones they were looking for" bla, bla, bla, but a WMD is a WMD no matter how you use it. The terrorist there would have no problem dropping in the middle of down town LA at rush hour. Thank God we did not give up looking for them. Keep in mind just three 155mm rounds can kill up to 5,000 people in one concentrated area. That is to say on a calm day, not a windy day.

Ceyaotl

You know that this article is lying right? Don't tell me that you still believe in the false claims it says?

Peltier's Beat Goes OnI pay taxes because those in law enforcement or the military industrial complex
depend on me to "Support the Police" & "Support The Troops"
or in other words to pay for their welfare and socialism benefits.

LOL Cleyaotl is still in lala land - he believes everything he reads (and cuts and pastes)

__________________'Life should NOT be a journey to the grave with the intention of arriving safely in an attractive and well preserved body, but rather to skid in sideways - Chardonnay in one hand -chocolate in the other - body thoroughly used up, totally worn out and screaming 'WOO HOO, What a Ride'

It was 3 a.m. in Italy on Jan. 29, 2003, when President Bush in Washington began reading his State of the Union address that included the now famous -- later retracted -- 16 words: "The British Government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa."

Like most Europeans, Elisabetta Burba, an investigative reporter for the Italian newsweekly Panorama, waited until the next day to read the newspaper accounts of Bush's remarks. But when she came to the 16 words, she recalled, she got a sudden sinking feeling in her stomach. She wondered: How could the American president have mentioned a uranium sale from Africa?

Burba felt uneasy because more than three months earlier, she had turned over to the U.S. Embassy in Rome documents about an alleged uranium sale by the central African nation of Niger. And she knew now that the documents were fraudulent and the 16 words wrong.

Nonetheless, the uranium claim would become a crucial justification for the invasion of Iraq that began less than two months later. When occupying troops found no nuclear program, the 16 words and how they came to be in the speech became a focus for critics in Washington and foreign capitals to press the case that the White House manipulated facts to take the United States to war.

Dozens of interviews with current and former intelligence officials and policymakers in the United States, Britain, France and Italy show that the Bush administration disregarded key information available at the time showing that the Iraq-Niger claim was highly questionable.

In February 2002, the CIA received the verbatim text of one of the documents, filled with errors easily identifiable through a simple Internet search, the interviews show. Many low- and mid-level intelligence officials were already skeptical that Iraq was in pursuit of nuclear weapons.

The interviews also showed that France, berated by the Bush administration for opposing the Iraq war, honored a U.S. intelligence request to investigate the uranium claim. It determined that its former colony had not sold uranium to Iraq.

Burba, who had no special expertise in Africa or nuclear technology, was able to quickly unravel the fraud. Yet the claims clung to life within the Bush administration for months, eventually finding their way into the State of the Union address.

As a result of the CIA's failure to firmly discredit the document text it received in February 2002, former U.S. ambassador Joseph C. Wilson IV was called in to investigate the claim. That decision eventually led to the special counsel's investigation that exposed inner workings of the White House and ended with the criminal conviction of I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby, who was forced to resign as chief of staff to Vice President Cheney.

"You know I feel bad about it," Burba said later, discussing her frustrations about her role in giving the dossier to the Americans. "You know the fact is that my documents, with the documents I brought to them, they justified the war."

The Tip

In early October of 2002, a man mysteriously contacted Elisabetta Burba at her Milan office.

"Do you remember me?" the deep voice said, without identifying himself outright. It was Rocco Martino, an old source who had proved reliable in the past. He was once again trying to sell her information.

Peltier's Beat Goes OnI pay taxes because those in law enforcement or the military industrial complex
depend on me to "Support the Police" & "Support The Troops"
or in other words to pay for their welfare and socialism benefits.